Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

A two and a half hour play about climate conferences doesn’t sound like the most appealing of evenings but this was edge of the seat stuff from start to finish.  Documenting the 10 years of delay from the first serious UN climate conferences, we first see the role of the oil companies and their partners in obfuscating and demonising the science, setting parties against each other and forming unholy allowances.  Then it moves on to focus on the conference which finally got agreement.   The set is a circular conference table and all audience members are given their lanyard and pass as they enter (I was the Norwegian delegate) with some of the front row actually sitting at the table.  In a clever move, it is a charming villain who is our guide here, in the form of Don Perlman (Stephen Kunken) who was a climate sceptic, oil lobbyist lawyer and an active disrupter of agreements, and who weaponises the specific interests of each country against each other.  He al...

First, let’s get it out there that I think Paapa Essiedu is an impressive actor so I was really pleased to get an on-the-day ticket for a second row seat to see his performance as Delroy.  I really like the auditorium at Soho Place, I don’t think there is a bad seat anywhere, but this was a particularly  good view although sometimes a bit uncomfortably close to the action. This 100 minute long monologue is intense, even more so in this intense space with eye contact possible with every member of the audience, adding to the engagement, or maybe complicity we feel.  And as ‘Delroy’, or maybe Essiedu, may well ask you a specific question and expect an answer we’d better be paying attention. I have somehow been seeing this trilogy of state of the nation plays in reverse order.  I saw the third (Closing Time) last year, but I still need to book to see the first one (Michael), annoyingly I missed Rafe Spall as Michael in the first iteration because I was ill.  Doing i...